This blog printed on 100% recycled electrons.
Harvard's Dr. Mankiw diverts himself (and us!) with some casual number crunching. He calculates taxes per person and finds the United States in the middle of the industrialized pack.
Interestingly, he finds that, while Canadians pay a higher proportion of their lower national income into taxes, each American writes a larger check to government than does each Canadian.
Yes, you, Joe Tea Bag, pay more in taxes than Gordon Maple Leaf.
Want to pay less taxes? Move to Canada, our big socialist neighbor with the single-payer health care system. Go figure.
F’ing USD
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So a friend of mine made this rap a few years back, and I have to tell you
I have friends over the years who went there and tell the same boring
stories, LOL.
14 hours ago
Leave off with the Tea Bag references already. I was enjoying a couple of your posts until your choice of terms told me that I was unwelcome here.
ReplyDelete[Wait a minute: Tea Bags are the emblem of the movement. I don't pick the symbols; I take what I'm given.]
ReplyDeleteIf you think it's bad now, wait until we have to pay a 10-percent value-added tax (VAT) on almost everything we buy -- in addition to all the other taxes.
ReplyDeleteMaybe then I really will move to Canada, or France, or The Netherlands!
Watch for a huge battle in 2011 after the President's panel on "deficit reduction" comes out with their recommendation of a new national VAT: the fiscal equivalent of giving booze to an alcoholic in detox.
The very rivers, lakes, and seas shall run green and brown with tea ...
If the tea party faction of the republican party are going to make any real impact on our nation, they are going to have to start coming up with some real ideas. Anybody can wave Gadsden"s flag and spit at congressman. We sure hear a lot about what they are against and very few ideas on how to solve the problems.
ReplyDeleteNot only is the Canadian system less expensive than ours, the people are more satisfied with it. 80% of Canadians using the health care system in the last year were satisfied with it. http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=2737354
ReplyDeleteThe U.S. has really lagged behind on health care efficiency.
Good point on solutions, Barry. I suspect a lot of the Tea Bags follow the same sort of free-market fundamentalism I did ten years ago. I wanted to believe that if we just took our hands of the tiller, everything would work itself out. It's a very easy philosophy to argue, very comforting... until it causes the worst recession since the 1930s.
ReplyDelete